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Tag: ballad

Yes I forgot to do a write up on ‘Zombie’ (and ‘The Funeral’ come to think of it) and yes we’re back to solo videos this week. I can be consistent in my inconsistency though, haven’t you heard?

This song just straight up breaks my heart if I’m being honest. There are a couple of thousand things I reckon Brian Fallon wrote this song in relation to, and there are a thousand more things personally to me that I can relate it to and in essence, that’s a large part of why I love songwriting. A part of you wants every listener to get what you meant when you wrote it, another part of you enjoys the different interpretations rolling in, especially if they are well wide of the mark to where your head was when you wrote it. I listen to ‘National Anthem’ and I am regularly struck dumb by the lines “I remember when she looked so good in that dress / Now she just screams that I promised her more than this / Take it easy baby, it ain’t over yet” and to me they are some of the finest words ever committed to paper in relation to the trials and tribulations of love and marriage. They’re also the only explicit reference in the song to those topics. Technically speaking, the song is more focused on the modern day tech obsession and maybe a little loss that Fallon feels is deriving from that (“Everybody lately is living up in space / Flying through transmissions on invisible airwaves”). To me though, those aforementioned lines are just so powerful that they dominate the entire song. Whereas they are mostly an aside in reality, to me the rest of the song is the aside. But that’s music, and that’s lyrics, that’s art. That’s also enough from me, and I swear the I’m Talkin’ Here slacking off is over!

I’ve gotta be honest, covering Ed Sheeran is a terrifying ordeal. The dude is just ridiculously talented and more terrifyingly – wildly adored. To say the the pressure is on when covering one of his tracks would be an understatement, but here we are, on what I’d say is roughly the fifth attempt at this particular track in 12 months, and we think we’ve finally got one we’re happy with! Peter remarked around the time we recorded this that Thinking Out Loud already has a feeling that it’ll become this decade’s Mr. Brightside. Sure, they’re two very different songs with very different applications, but the era defining nature of both and the timeless qualities shine through massively. Thinking Out Loud is an old school love song the likes of which we don’t see anymore, taking all the best element’s of The Beatles’ When I’m Sixty Four and Billy Joel’s Just The Way You Are and finding an ideal home somewhere in the middle. As always, watch, like, share, subscribe!*

*Also we swear, the requests are coming! Expect movement on that in the next few weeks!

Freddie White has been around the Irish music scene through every peak and drop it has seen. As we swept through punk, rock, disco, techno and all the rest, he has kept constant with his own brand of acoustic blues/jazz/folk and all the rest barring trad, staying true to his style. Back in Ireland from his current residence in Australia, I caught up with him and his equally talented wife Trish Hickey ahead of their sold out gig in The Mill Theatre in Dundrum in April.Continue reading The Last Of The Troubadours – A Conversation With Freddie White